


Down this hallway

by jean_tresjean



Category: Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 15:15:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17900552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jean_tresjean/pseuds/jean_tresjean
Summary: Chaplain captain Albert Taylor Tappman wanders around Pianosa, unaware that Yossarian is madly in love with him.





	Down this hallway

Chaplain captain Albert Taylor Tappman had shoes that squeaked. They were standard issue, patent leather and completely identical to the hundred’s of other pairs that marched around the Island of Pianosa. Yet somehow they had a unique propensity to announce his presence wheresoever he went. As if the cross on his shirt collar wasn’t enough to mark him as an outsider from the other men. 

“Haven’t you broken your goddamn shoes in yet?” Colonel Cathcart inquired, angrily. The chaplain had been attempting to sneak past him in the officers club but the squeaking of his shoes had given him away. 

“Yes sir,” replied the chaplain. “Well, that is, no sir.” 

“Yes sir?” 

“No sir,” the chaplain stuttered. “Or rather, yes sir. You see, I did break in some shoes.” 

“Those shoes?” 

“Some shoes.” 

“Whose shoes?”

“Not these shoes, sir. Corporal Whitcome’s shoes.” The chaplain shifted nervously, feeling that all the eyes in the officer's club were on him. “I-I think he switched out our shoes.” 

Colonel Cathcart looked about him incredulously. “Why the devil would he do that?” 

“Well, you see sir, I think that he-” 

The colonel cut him off. “And what the devil is a chaplain doing in the officer’s club anyways? It’s a real black eye to have a chaplain with squeaky shoes in the officer’s club. 

“Actually sir, I was just on my way out. I-”

“Stop mumbling chaplain!” Colonel Cathcart roared, “I think you had better get out of here!” 

“Right away, sir.” Chaplain captain Albert Taylor Tappman’s face flushed with embarrassment. 

Furtive glances and stifled laughter followed the chaplain as he walked quickly out into the night. He couldn’t bring himself to meet the eyes of his fellow officers, let alone go back to the tent that he shared with Corporal Whitcome. His atheist assistant would undoubtedly be able to distinguish his habitual rosacea from the heightened pigmentation of his burning cheeks and would take pleasure in knowing that he had succeeded in knocking the chaplain down a peg through his ruse. 

What would my wife think if she could see me? Thought chaplain captain Albert Taylor Tappman. He missed her and she missed him. They did not yearn for each other tragically, for theirs was not a marriage of passion but of practically. He missed her conventionally, as he missed his three children, his parish and his garden. On Saturdays, she would open her legs for him the way he would open the parish hall the next day; solemnly and with an air of sanctimony. If she were there with him to witness the bullying and the teasing he endured, she might have wondered out loud to him, post-coitus, how men came to be so unchristlike. Then she would suggest to that they invite the officers over for bible study. 

However, Mrs. ATT Tappman was not in Pianosa arranging bible study. Despite knowing what course of action she would take, the chaplain chose instead to walk leisurely through the night, slowly making his way towards the hospital with the intention of checking on the men there who were ill. 

The halls echoed loudly at the chaplain walked through them but here no one seemed to mind the sound of his shoes. Most were asleep or wishing that they would soon be. Somewhere he heard the sharp click of kitten heels belonging to Nurse Duckett or Nurse Kramer. The relative silence was broken by a yelp.

“Hello?” The chaplain walked into the ward to investigate the source of the cry. It was issued from a man the chaplain recognized as one Captain Yossarian, though the chart at the end of the bed said that his name was Helmsson and that his arm had recently been amputated above the elbow. The man in the bed flailed his hands about, entangling them in the perspiration soaked sheets. The bed and surrounding floor was littered with letters written by enlisted men and passed on to hospital patients for censorship. The thick black pen had been lost sometime in the night but not before leaving a mark across its owners cheek. 

“There, there,” said the chaplain, because he did not know what else to say. “There there.” He pressed a cold compress to the struggling soldier’s brow and quieted his hands. He knew Yossarian, had met him sometime before on rounds. At first, the chaplain had been nervous around the brash bombardier. He had avoided eye contact, and avoided it more intensely so when he felt Yosarrian’s curious, dark eyes scrutinizing him closely. Now for the first time, the chaplain watched Yossarian unabashedly as he sat by his side. Yossarian’s moans subsided. He did not wake until morning and when he did, the Chaplain was gone.


End file.
